Whenever I’m catching up with my married friends, it feels like I’m the only one talking. I felt really self-centered, until I realized I’m the only one with any updates. Aside from some construction or new furniture, they don’t have any news, much less, drama.

I wonder if I’ll ever be settled like them. If my life will ever be drama-free, without all the instability in my relationships, both good and bad.

If it hasn’t been painfully obvious, I’ve fallen off the wagon. I’ve been thinking about her again.

But it isn’t my fault.

You see, she came by my work and gave me a box of homemade shortbread cookies in a cute little box (as well as some for my other co-workers). I would normally say that it’s a nice gesture, but in this case, it was a cruel and painful reminder of what I had lost. But that pain subsided as I ate them (admittedly, in one sitting) and I decided to forgive her for that one. It’s hard to stay angry when the sugar and butter hits your brain.

Then she walked by at a concert, and squeezed my arm as she was passing by. I didn’t even know she was there until it happened. Then she did it again.

This whole time, I’ve been trying to get over things by staying away, and I was doing pretty well, until the touch¹ of her hand fanned the ashes of passion that were left smoldering in my chest, reversing several weeks of emotional recovery.

I told my friends I knew I was being selfish, because I’m the weaker one for not being able to handle it when she’s dating someone else². But they tell me it’s not selfish, it’s self preservation. That I’m just taking care of myself, and she’s the one being selfish and inconsiderate, because she’s not respecting my wishes to keep a distance. I’ve since stopped feeling guilty for staying away.

Still, I’m left with this wondering. What do her actions mean? What is she trying to communicate? What does she want?

I can only guess that she wants to remain friends, but there’s this stupid hope in the back of my mind that it meant something more. Maybe it’s a habit; I lived with that hope for more than a year as we fell into a relationship at arms length.

I’ve considered going back to her and asking for some closure — some real closure — but I don’t think even she can explain her actions at this point. And if she could, her answer would probably be the same as it’s always been.

But I really don’t know for sure because she’s chosen not to stay away, against my wishes, and my heart feels like it’s hanging by a thread. I doubt she’s doing it on purpose, but yet again, she gets to figure things out at the expense of my emotional stability. After all, it’s hard me to move on when mixed signals are holding me back, like an open, gaping wound constantly being picked.

1. This is the same sort of caress that can melt one’s resolve when coming from a person for whom one has a weakness. Humbert Humbert refers to this at the end of Lolita when he says to her, “Don’t touch me. I’ll die if you touch me.” [↑]
2. Then again, at least I know enough to stay away, instead of stalking and going psycho. [↑]

(A brief continuation of my diagrams for heartbreak.)

I love making these little diagrams. It’s so cathartic. I remember reading this xkcd comic (Do you know the functions? Answers in the footnote¹.) a long time ago, and thinking, “Yeah, I don’t get it either”.

I’ve always been a visual person, but I never realized that doing something like this would make things so much clearer. All those years earning a degree in computer science — learning Venn diagrams, flow charts, and the like — have finally come in handy.

1. From left to right, top to bottom: square root of love, cosine of love (trigonometry), derivative of love (calculus), matrix multiplication of love (linear algebra), and someone help me out with the last one, it seems like another calculus equation with some constants thrown in the Fourier transformation of love (Hat tip to Edd Sowden for this one). [↑]

Secrets aren’t so bad
We’re too young to feel safe
I don’t deserve all this now
Don’t want to feel I’ve made mistakes

I want to tell you everything
I want to tell you everything
But if I tell you everything
What we can build won’t mean a thing

—Secret’s Aren’t So Bad, Magneta Lane

There’s this thing, this sexual thing I like. I mean really like. It’s not exactly deviant, but certainly something that some girls may find gross or unappealing.

Even though it’s such a big deal to me, I never told any of my girlfriends about it. Only one of them liked it, and even she didn’t know how important it was to me, because it was something she wanted from me.

I know most of my girlfriends would have probably indulged me (at least once in a while) if I told them, but I never did. Not because it’s embarrassing, but because I never wanted any of them to feel obliged or pressured into doing it. I always think that one day, I’ll tell the right person because she’ll ask me what I like, and she’ll do it for me because she loves me. None of them have, yet, maybe because it’s never gotten boring in the bedroom.

So for now, it remains this little secret I keep, because secrets aren’t so bad. They can be little gems that bring people closer together. So why reveal them all so soon?

Remember this one, or even this one?

I wrote those entries four years ago¹. Amazing how much they apply to the situation I’m in now. Except this time, I’m stronger because I know that I survived this once already. It’s sad that at the end, all my efforts turned into an attempt at making sure I wouldn’t regret anything by giving more of myself than I should have. Because when all that you’ve given makes no difference, and you have nothing left, you know for sure that there’s nothing else you can do. You can always say that you took the chance, and it doesn’t matter if you get hurt in the end, because often you can’t separate the two.

That’s the price you pay to look back without any regrets. That’s the price of moving on.

And I always pay it gladly.

1. It’s quite a trip to see that I was mature or smart enough to figure this out back then. [↑]